Dreams or Reality
by HELDRACONIS
Summary: The Joker seems to have made an impression on Crane. Implied B/J


This was written for a prompt in an lj community contest. Hope you like it!

Disclaimer: I don't own Batman or Joker =(

Summary: The Joker seems to have made an impression on Crane. Crane's POV (I've never written Scarecrow/Crane before so this is probably OOC)

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Jonathan Crane lay on his back staring at the ceiling. He hated this place. He hated the doctors (most of whom he had probably hired) and he hated the inmates. It didn't help that he had experimented on most of them at some point and now that he was locked in here with them they had retaliated for the previous treatment (well the ones that weren't curled up in a corner drooling and whimpering anyway!) Thankfully for him the orderlies usually intervened before too much damage was inflicted but he still had some new scars.

Thinking of scars his mind wandered to a certain inmate who had recently arrived. The Joker. He had seen the news reports and the footage that the clown had shot himself, he had even heard the explosion when the harlequin had blown up the hospital, and he had found himself completely entranced as the events had unfolded on the TV. The clown had caused so much fear in such a small amount of time and even Scarecrow had seemed intrigued. He wanted to meet him, to have a chance to pick him apart and see if there was anything that he feared.

He remembered the first time that he had met the Joker. He had been in the common room, sitting in a corner and reading a book when the door opened and a young man had entered the room. He almost didn't recognise the man, the white and red make-up was gone and the hair was no longer green but blond. What stood out about the man was the way that he moved, predatory and confident; and the scars. The scars alone would have made him stand out, ragged and curving outwards from each side of his mouth.

Green eyes had finally met his and with a start Jonathan realised that he had been staring at the clown. He had quickly averted his gaze, returning it to the book in front of him but not before he noticed the scarred lips curving up in a smirk. He resisted the urge to look up when the chair opposite him was pulled back and the man sat down.

He could feel the other's eyes watching him and for a little while they sat in silence. When he couldn't stand it any longer he lifted his eyes from the page and found himself looking straight into the most amazing green eyes that he had ever seen. The clown was just grinning at him and Crane couldn't think of what to say. Even now he couldn't remember what he said to the man when he finally started talking or even what they said to each other. All he could remember vividly were those jade eyes and also the moment where things went wrong. The conversation somehow turned to the Batman and the Joker's eyes had lit up at the mention of the vigilante. Crane could still remember when Batman had forced his own fear toxin down his throat, it still haunted his nightmares. Anyway he couldn't remember exactly what he had said but he thought it might have been about how he would like to kill the Batman and the Joker's demeanour had changed. The smile didn't falter, if anything it got slightly more predatory, but the eyes changed. He wasn't sure how but somehow they changed. Unfortunately he didn't notice the danger sign until he was on the floor with the Joker standing over him, snarling out that the Batman was his and that if anyone tried to kill him then he would rip their guts out and stuff them down their throats. He remembered a chair crashing down on him and then unconsciousness claimed him.

He woke up in the medical wing of the asylum covered in bandages and with one of his arms in a cast. When he asked the nurses what had happened they had told him that Joker had been beating him with a chair and that the orderlies had eventually managed to drag him off before he killed him. He had managed to escape his encounter with the Clown Prince of Crime with only a broken arm, broken ribs and a lot of cuts and bruises. He was lucky to be alive but he didn't feel like it. Scarecrow pointed out that he probably shouldn't have mentioned Batman to which Jonathan irritably told him to shut up.

It took him weeks before the nurses let him return to his cell and he wasn't really looking forward to meeting the Joker again. Scarecrow was busy coming up with ideas of how they could get revenge on the clown for the attack but when he next saw him his thoughts just froze. It was in the common room again and Crane had returned to his seat in the corner when the Joker entered the room. Jonathan tensed when the clown noticed him and moved towards him. He looked around for an escape route or even for someone to help but before he could move the Joker was in front of him smiling and of all things inquiring about how he was. Jonathan just stared at him completely dumbfounded before stammering out a reply and then the clown just carried on the conversation that they were having before he had decided to try and beat Crane to death with a chair! Jonathan had just sat there trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

After his encounters with the Joker he now found that the clown also haunted his thoughts. It probably didn't help that the harlequin's cell was right next to his or that sometimes during the night he could hear the man laughing or talking to himself but now the clown also seemed to intrude on his daydreams as well. He couldn't really call them daydreams because they were too strange to be a daydream and what happened in them was something that he would never really want to imagine. He had decided that they must have put him on some new medication because he had never had daydreams like this before and they couldn't be reality because there was no possibility of these things actually happening. His nightmare, because it definitely wasn't a daydream, consisted mainly of sounds. The sounds of a struggle, of a body being slammed against a wall or onto the floor. The Joker moaning, whimpering and crying out in pleasure or possibly pain, he couldn't tell which, and then he would hear another sound. A sound that chilled his blood even if it was just in a dream; the growling voice of the Batman. The dreams always culminated with the Joker screaming out Batman's name. Sometimes his mind would decide to include images to accompany the sounds but he REALLY didn't want to dwell on those.

It had to be a dream because there was absolutely no way that it could be real! Could it? It had to be the meds. That was the only reasonable explanation for this.

He really hated this place!


End file.
